Every website owner, when starts his/her plans to extend the website traffic via mobiles, will have first confusions, whether to develop mobile application for their website or to build a mobile compatible website. Both the mobile app and mobile website have unique features that would be developed for a handheld touchscreen devices like smartphones or tablets.

Mobile app is an application with the functionalities of the website, in which the users will be allowed to download and install the files of the app into their device to use the application. Whereas the mobile website is nothing but the website gets loaded which will be compatible for mobile browsers.

There are many differences between the mobile app and the mobile website:

A mobile compatible website can be accessed via browsers in the handheld devices instantly, with a use of Internet connection, But a mobile application can be accessed only if it is installed in the device. To install the application, the user needs to download the files of the application from store such as Apple’s App Store, Android Market, or Blackberry App World according to the given operating system. Once that is installed directly onto the smartphone, in most cases, the app can be accessed without internet connectivity depending on the nature of the app.

A mobile website is much more dynamic than an app in terms of flexibility in updating the contents. If we need to change the design or content of a mobile website we can easily make the changes and the updates can be seen in the front-end immediately, but on the other hand updating an app involves the attention of the users, as they must download the files in order to update the app on every type of the device.

A mobile website can reach users across many different types of mobile devices, whereas mobile apps requires a separate version to be developed for each type of device.

The investment for an app or mobile website will not end with the initial launch. The proper maintaining and supporting an app (upgrades, testing, compatibility issues and ongoing development) is much more costly than the cost involved in maintaining a mobile website.

The mobile apps are still very popular, because of some of the interesting features like Interactivity, Gaming, regular usage, work offline, etc..